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23-year-old who's nabbed himself a house in the hot Auckland property market has proven the masses wrong by "doing, not whinging", says his mortgage broker.Ryan Daum made a few sacrifices to put down his $50,000 deposit on the three-bedroom Papakura home, but it all became worth it when the house became his own five weeks ago.
"I just wanted to get into my own place as soon as possible – not be paying someone else's mortgage," the Auckland local said.
Daum said the deposit was over $50,000, and the house itself was $510,000.
"I don't want to make out that it's not a hard thing to do," he said.
Daum said he scrimped and saved as much as he could, without totally giving up socialising.
He didn't drink, minimised his spending on food and essentially lowered his standard of living.
"I just cut out a whole lot of luxuries, as you may call them."
He sold the "old, classic car" he had been driving around, which secured him a $20,000 lump sum that acted as a tidy start to his deposit.
Daum's mortgage broker, Mike Whittaker from Mike Whittaker Mortgages, said Ryan was the classic example of a "doer" not a "whinger".
<br
>"He didn't get too caught up in the area that he was buying in."
Whittaker was hugely helpful in guiding him where to look and gave him realistic advice, Daum said.
"He got me some really good deals through the bank," said Daum, who had previously avoided dealing directly with banks.
"I wanted to stay in Howick where I'm from, but that just wasn't going to happen. Houses out there are going for around $800,000."
"But I found this place in Papakura ... I work out at Ardmore airfield now so yeah, it's all good."
Daum said he'd been hard at work modernising the house since he moved in with his flatmates.
He was getting rid of raised gardens, widening the driveway and painting and re-jibbing walls and said he wanted it to be a home of his own rather than a "buy-and-sell" type home.
Daum said the pay in his current line of work was a factor in him being able to afford the deposit. He dropped out of school at just 16, when he began working for Sky TV as a media operator.
When he was 20 he got an apprenticeship with a aircraft maintenance company, then squeezed 15 exams into 18 months at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology to become a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer.
Mortgage broker Whittaker said his biggest frustration was people being overly-stubborn about location.
He said people wanted to buy in the inner-city areas they rented in, like Ponsonby.
"I mean, there's nothing wrong with Mangere Bridge."
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